Essay Writing

Essay Writing is now compulsory for every candidate in the computer based TOEFL and the score in this section has been made an integral part of TOEFL score. Candidates sitting for TOEFL are given the option to either type or write their essay. For those who prefer to write their essay, rules sheets will be given at the test center. And if you like to get help with it, try this
Essay Writing Service

The Maximum marks for the Essay is 6.

The scoring guide for Essay Writing is:

Score of 6:

An essay at this level

• effectively addresses the writing task
• is well organized and well developed
• uses clearly appropriate details to support a thesis or illustrate ideas
• displays consistent facility in the use of the language
• demonstrates syntactic variety and appropriate word choice

Score of 5:

An essay at this level

• addresses some part of the task more effectively
• is generally well organized and well developed
• uses details to support a thesis or illustrate an idea
• displays facility in the use of the language
• demonstrates some syntactic variety and range of vocabulary

Score of 4:

An essay at this level

• addresses the writing topic adequately, but not fully
• is adequately organized and developed
• uses some details to support a thesis or illustrates an idea
• demonstrates adequate but possibly inconsistent facility with syntax and usage
• may contain some errors that occasionally obscures the meaning

Essay Writing is now compulsory for every candidate in the computer based TOEFL and the score in this section has been made an integral part of TOEFL score.

Score of 3:

An essay at this level reveals one or more of the following weaknesses.

• Inadequate organization or development
• Inappropriate or insufficient details to support or illustrate generalization
• A noticeably inappropriate choice of words or word forms
• An accumulation of errors in sentence structure or usage

Score of 2:

An essay at this level is seriously flawed by one or more of the following weaknesses.

• Contains no response
• Merely copies the topic
• Is off-topic, is written in a foreign language or consists of only keystroke characters

Essay Writing is now compulsory for every candidate in the computer based TOEFL and the score in this section has been made an integral part of TOEFL score.

To help you score more, we offer the following tips:

1. Do not use the words whose spellings you are not sure of.

2. Do not use bombastic words or phrases whose meanings you yourself are certain about. The beauty of English language is that you can write very effective prose using very simple words.

3. Do not make simple punctuation errors. Use capital letters only for the first letters of sentences and for the proper nouns.

4. Do not write long compound sentences, because they lead you to grammatical errors. Keep your sentences short and crisp.

5. Make sure that in every sentence the subject and predicate agree in number.

6. An average sentence will have a length of about 12 words. So, an essay of length of about 250 to 300 words need contain only 20 to 25 sentences.

7. TOEFL does not expect you to exhaust all ideas relating to the given topic. Plan your essay to have four paragraphs: an introductory paragraph where you define the subject, two intermediate paragraphs dealing with two specific issues relevant to the topic and the concluding paragraph where you summarize your views on the issue.